No one can prevail against the free will of fate...
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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Is free will real?
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.. nor opt to act in an entirely determined way.
  RE: Is free will real?
January 3, 2015 at 7:30 pm
(This post was last modified: January 3, 2015 at 7:30 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
(December 29, 2014 at 5:20 pm)rasetsu Wrote: ...I view something as an illusion if it appears as one thing, but in reality is something else.You will get no argument with that statement. I didn't see in your post any support for the idea that what people experience as free will is indeed an illusion. What makes you believe that the experience of making a free choice is a trick, i.e. 'something else' and not what it appears to be? 
If you watch a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat, it looks real, but, based on experience that magic does not exist, you know it to be an illusion. If a magician really magically pulled a rabbit from the hat, you would have no way of knowing that it was not an illusion. What is your basis for 'knowing' free will is not an illusion?
You make people miserable and there's nothing they can do about it, just like god.
-- Homer Simpson God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion. -- Superintendent Chalmers Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know. Important things. -- Ned Flanders Once something's been approved by the government, it's no longer immoral. -- The Rev Lovejoy  (January 3, 2015 at 7:30 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: What makes you believe that the experience of making a free choice is a trick, i.e. 'something else' and not what it appears to be?What does it appear to be? Does color appear to be wavelengths of light striking the retina, causing a factory of moleculer structures into action that transmit information to the brain that then fixes an image of an object with the property of color? Why should a scientifically literate interpretation of human thought and behavior be any less revelatory with regards to the actual world and our experience of it?
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
 RE: Is free will real?
January 4, 2015 at 7:11 am
(This post was last modified: January 4, 2015 at 7:22 am by h4ym4n.)
(December 15, 2014 at 4:15 am)The_greatest_river Wrote: What do you think? You have *true free will* when you have made a choice god didn't know you were going to make. (January 3, 2015 at 10:50 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote:People experience free will when they can conceive and consciously deliberate over potential courses of action and select among those choices apart from internal or external compulsion. One must presuppose physical causal closure to conclude that all choices are compelled.(January 3, 2015 at 7:30 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: What makes you believe that the experience of making a free choice is a trick, i.e. 'something else' and not what it appears to be?What does it appear to be? Does color appear to be wavelengths of light striking the retina, causing a factory of moleculer structures into action that transmit information to the brain that then fixes an image of an object with the property of color? Why should a scientifically literate interpretation of human thought and behavior be any less revelatory with regards to the actual world and our experience of it? Your color example assumes that the subjective of experience of color is identical to and reducible to some set of physical operations. Since one does not share all the qualities of the other (Law of Identity) the example fails. RE: Is free will real?
January 4, 2015 at 2:00 pm
(This post was last modified: January 4, 2015 at 2:04 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
No presupposition is required. We've observed hard determinism. Special pleading is required to remove -ourselves- from what we've observed everywhere else we've looked (and, of course....even in ourselves).
(Pickup actually described the set of physical operations the subjective experience of color reduces too.....in case you missed that, this description isn't an assumption, but a series of observations. What quality does one have that the other does not?)
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Hard determinism is one interpretation grounded in ontological naturalism. It is not, as you suggest, the raw data.
Mechanical processes are not about anything; they lack content. The experiences of knowing subjects are directed toward that which is experienced. |
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